atonaldenim

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atonaldenim
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  • OWC reveals Express 1M2, an ultra-fast USB 4 NVMe SSD enclosure

    Nice. Looks like the bus-powered offspring of their ThunderBlade enclosure design. 

    I have their previous fastest space grey Envoy Pro FX TB3/USB3 enclosure, and the photo Respite posted shows this new Express 1M2 should be an upgrade in terms of cooling.

    The previous Envoy Pro FX had the top of the SSD blade facing downward toward the bottom of the enclosure, so only the aluminum cover plate on the underside of the enclosure is able to contact the SSD blade as its primary heatsink.

    And the underside of the SSD blade has no heat dissipating contacts. At least on the 240GB model I got which came with a single-sided SSD, which I upgraded with a larger double-sided WD Black SN850X 4TB SSD. Easily done although OWC doesn’t sell it as a user-upgradable enclosure.

    The top part of the Envoy Pro FX’s aluminum case (which is the vast majority of its mass) doesn’t really make any good contact with the SSD blade, and so seems more for aesthetics than any functional benefit. It does get warm, so I guess there is some heat transfer happening, but it could be better. (photo attached)

    On the other hand this Express 1M2 design shows the SSD blade facing upward so the chips on the top side of the blade can contact and benefit from the large heatsink cooling fins in the top of the enclosure. Unfortunately I still don’t see any affordance in that photo of the 1M2 for cooling the underside of the SSD blade on double sided SSDs. 

    But given that the bus-powered Envoy Pro FX is marketed as Intel Evo + Thunderbolt certified with speeds up to 2800MB/s, I gotta say it’s pretty strange that OWC’s marketing copy claims: 
    Up to 2X Thunderbolt Performance
    Don’t Get Fooled
    Because we’re widely considered the Thunderbolt experts, we must know all the little details that others purposefully overlook or hide. For a bus-powered enclosure to be Thunderbolt certified, it must meet Intel power certifications. As such, speeds are limited to 1500MB/s. While many no-name brands claim to be USB4, they are in fact Thunderbolt 3 solutions that do not follow Intel specifications. Unlike those budget brand pretenders that will leave you feeling fooled and disappointed…
    Not sure why they want to claim this enclosure is 2x faster than other Thunderbolt SSDs, when they advertise speeds only like 12% higher than their own previous Thunderbolt SSDs. Typical OWC hype, they’d be a lot better off if they toned down the exaggerated marketing. 

    I also just noticed that on any Intel Mac, the Express 1M2 will only run at 10Gb/s USB 3.2 speeds, that’s a big caveat. It requires an Apple Silicon Mac or PC with USB4 ports to run at full speed. For anyone who might need to connect to an Intel Mac I’d recommend their Envoy Pro FX instead, which runs at 28Gb/s TB3 speeds on Intel or Apple Silicon Macs or PCs with TB3/4 ports, and is also USB 3.2 compatible at 10Gb/s speeds on any computer’s USB port that doesn’t have Thunderbolt. Despite its less effective cooling design, in the end Thunderbolt speeds are less than half of the top speed of the latest PCIe 4.0 SSDs anyway, so it’s not like they’re running at full throttle. 



    watto_cobraroundaboutnow
  • RIP Touch Bar -- Apple sends the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the grave

    called it! 😊
    watto_cobrawilliamlondon
  • New M3 MacBook Pro box may have been leaked

    I agree, the 13" Macbook Pro with M2 will be replaced by a 14" Macbook Pro with M3.

    In April, Mark Gurman reported on a new Mac15,3 model found in developer logs running Sonoma (then-unreleased) with the 14" screen resolution but a CPU configuration that matched the base M2. At the time he thought this would be the forthcoming 15" Macbook Air M2, however that ended up launching as Mac14,15 with a lower resolution screen than Mac15,3. Instead I think we were getting an early clue of what the M3 generation of MBP would look like.

    The current 13" design with Touchbar was originally a cut-down variant of the higher-end 13" MBP design, the only major design difference from the higher end MBP was that it had 2 Thunderbolt ports rather than 4. But now, this 13" MBP M2 design is super outdated, it's still the last Macbook hanging on to the discontinued Touchbar, while the 14" and 16" models got an all new chassis design in 2021 in the M1 generation. It's long overdue for the entry-level MBP model to fall in line with the rest of the current MBP design. So Apple can say with a straight face again "the Macbook Pro starts at $1299" (or $1399 or whatever it will become.)


    watto_cobra
  • Just what we needed: another Apple dongle, this time for USB-C to Lightning

    A use case for this that I’ve encountered is wired game controllers. For the least amount of controller lag one might want a game controller that plugs in rather than a wireless bluetooth connection. All iPhone compatible game controller grips such as the Razer Kishi or Backbone One only have lightning connections, none come with a USB-C connector. The ones that do have USB-C are only compatible with Android, not iOS.

    A year ago I spent about $10 on an Apple Pencil adapter they sold when iPad switched to USB-C that has a female lightning port and male USB-C port. After shaving down the plastic to fit a normal lightning cable into it (the Pencil’s lightning port is extra long) I found the pencil adapter completely failed to pass data for any device I plugged into it, controller or otherwise.

    This new Apple adapter promises to pass data as well as power from a Lightning accessory to a USB-C device, which is actually a first. The existing adapters you can buy on Amazon will only pass power, not data.

    For the game controller use case, of course you couldn’t use a Kishi or Backbone style grip on your new phone without some creative cable management, the adapter is too big for that. I’m excited to see some iOS-compatible USB-C game controllers hopefully hit the market, and crossing my fingers one of them will finally support an iPad Mini size device, which I’ve owned with a USB-C port for two years now. Of course we can use a regular PS5/Xbox controller with a USB cable, but I like the all-in-one idea. I want my iPad Mini to work like the new Playstation Portal handheld remote play device. We’ll see…
    watto_cobra
  • NuPhy Field75 Wireless Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review: Not your ordinary mechanical key...

    hmm since this is an Apple site, how well does this keyboard work on an Apple computer in MacOS? is it possible to program the G# keys at all? does the volume control knob work? do the meta keys work as a standard Apple keyboard or do you have to manually switch the Option / Command buttons in MacOS settings as if it were a Windows PC keyboard?

    I’m not a mechanical keyboard enthusiast so maybe the answers are obvious to someone who is, but I’m left scratching my head by the passing mention that the software isn’t available for MacOS and no further discussion of how it functions within MacOS. is the target audience for this review people who exclusively run Windows on Apple hardware?
    watto_cobra